Harry Fleetwood, 86, Classical Radio's Classic Nightly Voice

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: January 25, 2004

Harry Fleetwood, whose deep voice and sly wit gave smooth, intelligent guidance to fans of all-night classical music radio in New York City for nearly three decades, died last Sunday in Manhattan, his friend Jerry Kaufman said. He was 86.

Fleetwood, as he was known professionally, was most often called a commentator or host -- not a disc jockey -- on his shows on WNBC in the 1950's and 60's and on WNCN in the 70's and 80's.

A generation of New Yorkers, and thousands elsewhere reached by the stations' signals, knew his opinions as the pitch-perfect accompaniment to programs devoted to unusual and difficult short pieces of music and longer works, including full-length operas.

The radio and television commentator Charles Osgood, who knew Mr. Fleetwood, attributed his appeal to his being ''so wonderfully civilized.'' ''He just sounded like a very intelligent and gracious sort of man,'' he said in an interview a few days ago.

Mr. Fleetwood's talents went far beyond his nocturnal musical presentations. He read poetry on another program, sang folk songs on still another and traveled America to profile interesting people on still another.

His fluent French permitted him to play host on programs for French and Belgian television. He also narrated newsreels, did voice-overs for television, appeared in commercials for companies ranging from Bayer aspirin to Greyhound, and made a recording of the Bible.

Mr. Fleetwood was born in Laurel Springs, N.J. The date is uncertain. He never married and left no known survivors, and several friends were hazy about the exact chronology of his life. Some details of his career are obscured because the stations where he worked no longer exist

He was at WNBC from 1954 until 1975, when he joined WNCN; he stayed into the late 1980's.

Mr. Fleetwood graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he majored in education. He earned a master's degree in Romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania, and broke into the radio business in 1938 in Camden, N.J., he told The Daily News in 1997.

At the end of his military service with the United States Army in Europe in World War II, he stayed to study at the Sorbonne. In 1948, he got a job with a Philadelphia radio station.

His first big break came in 1953, when he was one of more than 1,500 would-be announcers who applied to become the host of ''Music Through the Night'' on WNBC. About 125 were interviewed, and he was chosen.

Lloyd Moss, a longtime host on the classical music station WQXR and one of the losers in that competition, called Mr. Fleetwood's voice ''mellifluous.''

George E. Sokolsky, a columnist for The New York Journal-American, was more precise. He characterized Mr. Fleetwood's accent as ''American, not British, but it is unaffected, un-Harvardized, un-New York English.''

He continued, ''It rings like the educated clergy at the beginning of this century before they became ashamed of what used to be called elocution.''

David Dubal, the program director at WNCN who hired Mr. Fleetwood, characterized his style as ''straightforward but extremely intimate.''

Mr. Fleetwood, who was 6 feet 7 inches tall, was in the habit of sweeping into the studio around 11:55 p.m. for his 12:05 a.m. program, often wearing a dinner jacket and leading a retinue of people with whom he had attended an opera performance.

Once he had settled in, he enjoyed departing from the music director's playlist and instead honoring listeners' requests. ''The cat's-away time!'' he would cackle, to indicate that the music director had stepped away.

Mr. Fleetwood made friends with many of his callers. In an interview with FM Guide in 1972, he talked about a New Yorker who had moved to Chattanooga and regularly gathered late at night with other expatriates to sip martinis and telephone him. He said a woman named Penelope fell madly in love with him, or was it just with his marvelous French?